November 2, 2011

Halloweeny!

For the fast four years I've basically ignored Halloween. I would think of amazing costumes and plan on going to huge parties and end up sitting at home and watching Hocus Pocus or putting a black t-shirt on my head and calling myself a ninja. But, since this was my first Halloween in the big city, I decided to put a little effort into my costume. Well, all I really did was put on some makeup and just wore normal clothes, but it miraculously worked out.

I was an octopus! And when I got home at 5:00 in the morning I decided to make a video before tearing it all off my face. Here ya go:

I started contemplating this costume after the first time I saw Joanna Delilah's tutorial about six months ago. I remember thinking "Oh my God! I want tentacles glued to my face SO BAD!" ...feel free to psychologically dissect that statement and let me know what you come up with. When I first moved to the city I went to a costume shop (that is open year-round! because they have those here!) and spent about an hour drooling over the makeup counter. This was back in July when I still had money, so I bought some liquid latex and some face paint. "Octopus face, here I come!"

About a week and a half before Halloween I got a job, and my fabulous new manager said to all the hires, "Okay ladies! You'll be starting November 1st, and we'll send you an official training schedule later this week!" If you haven't done the math yet, November 1st is the day after Halloween. I decided then and there that I wouldn't be going out that night, saving all of my energy and brain function for my first day on the job. So I went to a party on Saturday and called my Halloween weekend fulfilled.

First thing Sunday morning I get an e-mail from LUSH saying, basically, "Hey ladies! You're starting Wednesday the 2nd!" And I'm sure there was plenty of other important information in there, but that's all I read before throwing my phone across the room and running out the door to buy a styrofoam head and three hundred sponge brushes. I did end up watching Hocus Pocus as part of my original plan, about 4 times actually, because it served as great background noise for putting liquid latex and Fruit Loops all over my face.

My first plan for the evening was to be in the Village Halloween Parade. The line-up was from 18:30-20:30, so I figured I would have plenty of time to get down there if I started the makeup around 15:00. In reality I didn't make it downtown until 21:30 or so. Oops! I was meeting my friend Caroline, who was marching in the Occupy Wall Street portion of the parade (aka, the very end). She was dressed as a Laissez-Fairey, which I thought was very clever.

After about twenty minutes of phone calls that went something like, "I'm behind the pink robot! Okay, now I'm behind the big bull puppet thing! Okay, now I'm behind the tall guy wrapped in green Christmas lights! Okay, this is impossible!" we finally found each other. Since protesting isn't really my scene and because Caroline was freezing, we decided to forgo the protest portion of the parade, but we failed. We ended up smack dab in the middle of the march.

I kept waving my hands in a circle around me so that I could keep some space between my tentacles and everyone else. But that didn't stop people from grabbing them every ten seconds. "Oh my God! Look at that!" *GRAB* Bitches! I consider tentacle grabbing equivalent to testicle grabbing, or boob grabbing. You just don't do it without asking first!

As a result of the rampant groping of my facial appendages, a few had become loose and were well on their way to joining the piles of discarded limbs in the gutter, along with innumerous cardboard robot arms and tulle butterfly wings. To prevent such a thing from happening, we ducked into the nearest Duane Reade (after getting on the wrong train and riding around for forty five minutes) to buy some eyelash glue. The streets of NYC on Halloween were a war zone, but my tentacle was saved, and no limbs were lost in the battle.

We decided to stroll around on some of the less crowded streets for an hour or so before heading to a big party. We were sort of stalked by a ridiculously cute guy who asked us to join him at a tiny local bar. We did not refuse. We found out he was from North Carolina, lived in Brazil for a year but did not learn Portuguese, and used to be an investment banker. I somehow convinced him to let me put glitter all over his face so he wouldn't stand out so much at the big glam party, but I really only succeeded in gluing his eyelashes together and apologizing profusely.

He wasn't able to get into the party because I was only on the list with a +1 and they weren't making any exceptions. It was a sad moment. But the rest of the night at Oh! You Pretty Things was absolutely amazing! (Le) Poisson Rouge is a great venue, and it was full of amazing people. There were live performances of all the music from Cabaret, fantastic DJs, and even better burlesque performances. Here's a good photo album from Nicky Digital. My photos are much less appealing:

Caroline and our new boy toy (before the glitter)

My amazing friend Margo, aka The Flying Fox

Loved, loved, loved Cruella de Vil

At the end of the night I won the costume contest, with some fierce competition from Cruella de Vil, Chucky and his Bride, and The Shufflin' Robot. I won a ton of shit: